A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

This is bad. According to The Post, the authors of newly minted article in Global Change Biology, say,

As global temperatures warm, they will create conditions such as rain [!], wind and sea-level rise that will cause dead zones throughout the world to intensify and grow…

Dead zones are (sometimes) large regions of hypoxic seawater that appear every summer. Because of their seasonality, obviously global warming is making them worse, right? (see 2) above) Or is it due to the fact that, on the average, humans are flushing more agricultural nitrates into the ocean as we produce ever more food? So the nitrates fertilize the ocean, algae bloom and die, bacteria decompose them and in the process, water becomes hypoxic, and fish die.

The front page of yesterday’s New York Times included the beginning of a long article about geoengineering—in this case, as it applies to purposeful activities aimed at changing the earth’s climate at a large scale. Why on earth would anyone even think of doing something like that? Why to avoid catastrophic global warming, of course!

Thankfully, most signs point to only a modest global temperature increase resulting from our fossil fuel usage—a rise that will be readily adapted to and which actually may work out to be more beneficial than detrimental. Thankfully, we say, because geoengineering schemes seem like really bad ideas full of nasty consequences (unintentional and otherwise) and we are glad that no one is seriously entertaining them.

Most folks who spend much time critically thinking about geoengineering the climate arrive at the same conclusion.

Perhaps the myth-iest chestnut in the scary global warming meme is that our dear earth’s panoply of species is adapted only to the current climatic regime, and changing that regime means certain death, i.e. extinction.

That’s an easy, simplistic sell, but it denies some of the subtleties of organismal biology. Four decades ago, scientists realized that evolution has preserved a variety of responses to environmental change. It turns out that our enzymes, the basic material that catalyze life as we know it, actually change their shape as climate changes. Whether this is because we have so much information stored in our DNA that has survived countless generations and a variety of climates, or whether the response is simply built into the enzymes is unknown, but it is ubiquitous. It even has a catchy name: “Phenotypic Plasticity.”

Before your eyes glaze over, a little explanation is in order.

Each one of us has a genotype, which is our DNA, and each of us has an expression of that, our “phenotype.” Obviously not all genes express themselves—if they did, our physiological destiny would be eminently predictable, but it is not. Instead, we all carry strands of DNA that could theoretically cause major disease that generally do not express (or “penetrate” in the lingo of biology), and we also have DNA that could probably defeat many of the aging processes, that similarly do not express.

Instead, organisms display “plastic” responses when their environment changes. And so, species-related concerns over potential CO2-induced global warming may be dramatically overblown. And, though they don’t get much publicity, scientists are continually documenting our amazing adaptability.

You Ought to Have a Look is new a feature from the Center for the Study of Science posted by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. (“Chip”) Knappenberger. While this section will feature all of the areas of interest that we are emphasizing, the prominence of the climate issue is driving a tremendous amount of web traffic. Here we post a few of the best articles and essays in recent days, along with our color commentary.

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We have a couple of new introductions to make to our You Ought to Have a Look line-up.

We’re big fans of Daniel Botkin. He is an environmental biologist with a panoramic view of nature. He started his career as a forest modeler (that’s someone who predicts the future composition and structure of forests) and was a Government-Issue global warmer. Since then, he has written 16 books on the environment and has become a champion lukewarmer—a person who, like us, synthesizes the climate data and comes to the hypothesis that warming will be modest and readily adapted to. On May 29, he testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, on systematic problems with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. On June 18, he was before a subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Botkin has a thought-provoking piece this week in the National Parks Traveler—a website dedicated to all things National Parks. In his article, he critiques a report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) with the predictably alarming title, “National Landmarks at Risk: How Rising Seas, Floods, and Wildfires Are Threatening the United States’ Most Cherished Historic Sites.” The paleolithic media were all over the UCS report when it came out six months ago, and it headlined several news shows on the dinosaur networks. For “balance,” we managed a few soundbites.

Botkin’s article is more in-depth than the UCS report, concluding that human-caused global warming gets far more attention than it deserves in the universe of environmental issues, which precludes appropriate attention to real issues.

Botkin writes:

However, global warming has become the sole focus of so much environmental discussion that it risks eclipsing much more pressing and demonstrable environmental problems. The major damage that we as a species are doing here and now to the environment is not getting the attention it deserves.

Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”

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It is the current rage in the mainstream media and the government to tie almost everything into human-caused global warming—from a sluggish economy to Ebola, and everything in between (and then some).

In fact, virtually none of these claims are supported by a consensus of evidentiary science. Here is (yet) another example, debunking the popular notion floods are being worsened by dreaded climate change caused by pernicious economic activity.

Clinically speaking, a “flood” is actually an extreme excursion in streamflow. So, if changes in streamflow are related to long-term changes in climate, and we accept that the majority of those latter changes are caused by said economic activity (we don’t), then our activities should increase streamflow and therefore the frequency of floods (or their opposite, droughts).

Two scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Gregory McCabe and David Wolock, recently examined historical (1951-2009) streamflow records from 516 rivers and streams that they considered to be only minimally impacted by human development. They first sorted the data into regional patterns, and then compared the temporal behavior of these patterns to common historical climate indices—such as well-known patterns of atmospheric circulation, sea surface temperatures, or even large-scale warming.

It turns out that there weren’t any relationships between streamflow and the larger atmospheric phenomena. Or at least, so very few that they are hardly worth mentioning.

Here is how McCabe and Wolock describe what they (didn’t) find:

Comparing time series of climate indices…with the time series of mean [stream] flow for the 14 clusters [patterns] indicates weak correlations that are statistically significant for only a few clusters. These results indicate that most of the temporal variability in streamflow in the conterminous U.S. is unpredictable in terms of relations to well-known climate indices. [emphasis added]

In other words, trends and/or variability in larger-scale features of the climate (including rising temperature from global warming) are not very strongly (if at all) related to regional and temporal characteristics of streamflows across the U.S.

And before anyone starts to argue that we have left out the direct (i.e., local) effect of global warming—that warmer air holds more moisture and thus it can rain more frequently and harder—McCabe and Wolock report very few long-term trends that would be indicative of steadily rising moisture levels. Instead, the find the historical records dominated by periods of multidecadal variability. In their own words:

Analyses of the annual mean streamflow time series for the 14 streamflow clusters indicated periods of extended wet and dry periods, but did not indicate any strong monotonic trends. Thus, the mean cluster streamflow time series indicate nearly random variability with some periods of persistence.

The bottom line is that McCabe and Wolock do not identify any behavior in historical U.S. streamflow records that is suggestive of an influence from human-caused global warming.

So next time you hear that there are increasing droughts or floods in the U.S. and that they are, through some convoluted explanation, “consistent with” global warming, remember two things: 1) “consistent with” is not the same as “caused by” and, 2) the consensus science linking global warming to changing streamflow characteristics across the U.S. is lacking.

Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”

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In a recent Global Science Report, we posted some good news coming out of California’s Sierra Nevada, where climate change (from whatever cause), has been partially responsible for a greening of the organo state. Technically, the biomass in the montane forests has been on the increase over the past several decades.

Turns out climate change is for the birds, too. Yes, little Eastern Bluebirds (which almost went extinct because of habitat damage)—raising their young in cute houses, awakening us with their melodious songs, providing free cat food, and selectively messing only on my car. What’s not to like? And who wouldn’t like more birds? And if you live in the Eastern United States, there is a climate-related increase in cat purring because global (actually, local/regional) warming is increasing the range of songbirds.

A new study appearing in the journal Global Change Biology, authored by Karine Princé and Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, finds that:

[A] shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonize new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America.

The operative word here is “colonize.” In other words, they are spreading out from their home range, not moving north in lockstep.

You Ought to Have a Look is a recurring feature from the Cato’s Center for the Study of Science that briefly highlights a few interesting blog posts from around the web that are comments on subject areas we are currently emphasizing. Climate change issues currently top the list. Here we post a few of the best in recent days, along with our color commentary. This is the first installment of You Ought to Have a Look

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We start off with the estimable Judith Curry, former chairwoman of the highly regarded School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology (aka “Georgia Tech”). Her musings, published every few days on her blog “Climate Etc.” have a wide following amongst climate geeks (like us), while oftentimes her postings should be of interest to a wider, more general audience.

Judith scored big last week with an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In her subsequent blog post “My WSJ op-ed: Global warming statistical meltdown,” she takes you through the version that appeared in print as well as some of the earlier drafts of it highlighting lessons she learned along the way. The article focuses on her recent blockbuster publication in which she and co-researcher Nic Lewis peg the earth’s climate sensitivity—how much warming will occur as a result of a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide—at a value about one-half that which is produced by the collection of “state-of-the-art” climate models used by the UN and the Obama Administration to underpin their calls to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions from the production of energy.

And nearly every Friday, she posts her “Week in Review” where she highlights things that have recently caught her eye or events that she was involved in. In the current issue, she describes her recent travels which included a trip to Ohio’s Oberlin College where she “debated” me (PJM). As she describes it:

The debate went fine, we each had 10 minutes to make opening statements on the science, and then an additional 10 minutes to discuss broader implications. I used my time to discuss the values issues and decision making under deep uncertainties. PJM discussed the increasingly perverse incentives in academia and government funded science, see [link] for some of his recent writing on this topic. He definitely makes some valid points.

Next, you might want to check out the witty Matt Briggs (“Statistician to the Stars”) post on “Don’t Say ‘Hiatus’” in which he takes us (and virtually everyone else) to task for using the terms “pause” and/or “hiatus” to refer to the past 18 years or so of no statistically significant overall change in the earth’s average surface temperature. Briggs’ main point is that since climate change models are so bad (unskillful), there is no reason for a priori expectations of the temperature behavior one way or the other. In other words, a “pause” from what?

Be aware that Briggs is a very twisty writer, often leading the reader down a path that takes a sharp turn further down his somewhat detailed essays. But there is always some gem to find at the end!